


A Song You'll Regret

by skyline



Series: A Song You'll Regret [1]
Category: Big Time Rush
Genre: Love Triangles, M/M, Second Chances, Unrequited Love, your pov is not always right Logan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-07
Updated: 2011-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-14 01:40:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/509951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyline/pseuds/skyline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Logan blamed James for, what he could never forgive, was that- apparently- James had decided to go and let himself finally fall in love. With someone who wasn't Logan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I'll Share The Trap That You Have Me In

_Is he still coming around like an injured bird needing a nest? A place to rest his head and a song you'll regret. Lord knows I don't want to compete, but still I sleep in the very sheets that he's been in._

_-Sheets by Damien Jurado-_

_  
\---_

 

James Diamond was kind of a slut.  
  
It was common knowledge. He had a head for the ladies, and a pretty enough face that ‘the ladies’ flocked to him like migrant Canadian Geese. When he dumped one Girl of the Week, or, in a less likely scenario, got dumped (which had actually happened more often than James would admit to) for being vain, narcissistic, inattentive, flaky, or an attention whore (or all of the above), there was always a newer model waiting to take her place.  
  
But it was a little known fact that given the right conditions, James would screw (or let himself be screwed) by just about anyone.  
  
It was really frightfully easy to get James in bed.  
  
Get him drunk, and he got horny.  
  
Compliment him relentlessly, and he got horny (there might even be mirrors involved).  
  
Tell him your grandmother just died, and, well, James wouldn’t get horny, but he seemed to equate pity with sex and thought fucking was the easiest way to make a person feel better.  
  
Logan knew about that one first hand.  
  
Anyway, James saw more action than some brothels, and it wasn’t really something he was ashamed of. He had _rules_.  
  
Safety first.  
  
No repeats.  
  
And no strings, ever.  
  
Which is why the day Logan found him buried beneath the covers of Kendall’s bed, stark ass naked, was kind of disconcerting.  
  
The rule James broke most often was the one about repeats. If a girl (or guy) was fucking fantastic in the sack, well, James had Self Control Issues. As long as they didn’t start to get clingy, he was usually up for seconds, and maybe even thirds.  
  
But this wasn’t the second, or even the third time that James had gotten intimate with their mutual friend.  
  
Logan vividly remembered walking in on Kendall and James going at it like rabbits on the kitchen counter of his house back in Minnesota, when they were still figuring all this sex stuff out. He’d wanted milk, and he’d gotten his best friends in the throes of, well-  
  
He wasn’t sure how to forget it. The image was emblazoned on the back of his eyelids even now, after two years. Sometimes, in the dark of his room, Logan would think about it, or- another night like it- and his hand would work its way into his jeans until his brain imploded in a mushy puddle of guilt and ecstasy.  
  
James wasn’t the kind of guy who got attached to lovers, and Kendall was- as far as Logan knew- mostly straight. So he’d sort of figured that would be an episode he’d never have to live through again.  
  
Only, it kept happening.  
  
At first, sporadically. Logan was reasonably sure Kendall and James hadn’t experimented again for the rest of their high school career, and by the time they moved to California, he’d figured it was a distant memory (that occasionally made him come so hard it hurt, with a name perched on his lips, but-).  
  
Until he caught James sneaking out of Kendall’s room early one morning, before rehearsals, face painted with something almost like shame and neck covered in hickeys.  
  
And then again; he caught the both of them stumbling out of the restroom after a Palmwoods party, deft fingers buckling their jeans and straightening what was decidedly sex hair, lips red and clothes rumpled.  
  
There was a fourth time after a full day of running through harmonies, in Gustavo’s office, caught in the act. A fifth long past midnight, when Logan happened to glance out his window during a crash course in studying thermodynamic physics (because the Palmwoods School just wasn’t difficult enough) and saw two familiar figures moving in the pool, bodies illuminated by watery lights. A sixth and seventh on the tour bus, when he was just passing by the bunks and ended up hearing noises that couldn’t be anything but the naughty kind.  
  
Logan was beginning to think his friends were organizing these romantic interludes on his behalf.  
  
Except he’d known James and Kendall his whole life. He knew there was nothing _romantic_ about the way they seemed to enjoy fucking in new and exciting places. James still went after anything with legs, and ninety nine percent of the time, Kendall was mostly (obnoxiously) absorbed with Jo.  
  
So Logan couldn’t really figure out why it kept happening. He just knew that he was praying for it to stop.  
  
Because, thing was, it _hurt_.  
  
Logan loved Kendall like a brother. He had since the second they’d met on the playground in third grade; Kendall wearing a paper crown and brandishing a cardboard sword, Carlos at his heels in a matching ensemble (with a stylish cape fashioned from a towel). But the day he found James laying in his bed, contentedly sleeping the morning away, Logan kind of wanted to punch Kendall in the face.  
  
It wasn’t a compulsion born of pure, unadulterated hatred, but whatever he was feeling came pretty close. Logan didn’t blame James for _wanting_ Kendall. He was brave and fearless and golden; their fierce, strong leader in pretty much everything. More than one wet dream during Logan’s formative years had featured their hockey captain in varying states of undress, incestuous or not. What Logan did blame James for, what he could never forgive, was that- apparently- James had decided to go and let himself fucking finally fall in love.  
  
With someone who wasn’t Logan.  
  
He realized it was stupid.  
  
Nobody ends up with their first love. Logan knew that, the way he knew that Venus (best celestial body ever) was the hottest planet in the solar system, or that Titanic (secretly his favorite movie in the world) had booked the highest earnings in the box office, ever, until Avatar (overrated) had knocked it from its spot. It was one more boring, useless fact bouncing away in his boring, useless brain.  
Logan was smart, and Kendall was golden, and really, he knew who he’d choose if he was stuck between the two of them.  
  
It didn’t make James’s betrayal hurt any less.  
  
Silently, he slipped from Kendall’s bedroom into the warmth and safety of the living room, wondering what to do, if anything at all. Because as much as he hated to admit it, it wasn’t any of his business what his friends decided to do between the sheets, no matter how it cut him. James didn’t even know that Logan felt one way or another about him, at least- he _hoped_ James didn’t. Logan had dedicated considerable time and effort into ensuring he never found out.  
  
It wasn't like he could even pinpoint when or how he’d begun to like James.  He'd never be able to say if it was a slow burning desire that had gradually been fuelled as they grew up side by side, or if it was something quicker, harsher, all consuming. All he knew was that he had trouble reconciling the little boy he’d once helped shovel snow in the driveways of their neighbors for a whole five dollars between the both of them with this grown up prima donna, this beautiful, perfect sculpture of a boy, like a parody of what real boys were.  
  
James was gorgeous and vain and kind of loose with his morals, and all of it had been blown of proportion since they’d moved to Hollywood. And while Logan appreciated the pretty, slutty narcissist that his best friend had become, he also liked the parts of James that only his friends saw.  
  
How kind and compassionate he was underneath all that bravado and how brave he could be; James was the only one that ever stood up to Kendall. How strong and masculine he was when he wasn’t running around trying to be a prissy male model.  
  
The James Logan had always known was a simple mountain boy with a dream and a killer voice, and it annoyed him that he couldn’t figure out if that was what Kendall saw, or if he was enamored with the façade. The worst part was, Logan loved Kendall too; maybe not in a sexual way, but more than a person was supposed to love their friends. That wasn’t a surprise, though. Everybody loved Kendall. He was golden.  
  
Speak of the devil, and he appeared.  
  
Kendall walked into the room, and he looked like sunshine. He had a towel slung over his shoulders, hair dripping wet tracks down his forehead and cheekbones, chlorinated water drying on his collarbone. He smiled at Logan, dimpling, “Hey. You ready to hit the studio?”  
  
Logan frowned.  
  
“Isn’t it a little early for you to be up?”  
  
Kendall shifted, smile fading a bit, “I, uh. Never went to sleep. Too much energy.”  
  
His hands twitched over the towel.  
  
“I’ll bet,” Logan said, and he knew he was glaring.  
  
“Are you okay?” Kendall asked. He was making that face he made whenever he got really confused. Usually girls were involved with the  
emergence of that face.  
  
Logan took a deep breath.  
  
“I’m not okay. I’m drawing the line,” he toed the linoleum where he stood, “See? Here. This is the line.”  
  
“Really? Because it looks like the floor.”  
  
“Stop trying to be clever. You don’t wear it well.”  
  
“Wow. Did your period come early this month?”  
  
Logan fixed him with his most scathing look. Kendall didn’t seem particularly impressed. Maybe James was right and it was time to start practicing his expressions in the mirror for efficacy.  
  
“This needs to stop,” Logan insisted.  
  
“I would probably agree with you if I had any idea what you’re talking about.”  
  
“What you’re doing with James. It needs to stop.”  
  
Kendall’s face immediately shuttered closed, and he mumbled, “I knew I should’ve let Carlos dissect your brain when we were nine.”  
  
“Carlos wanted to dissect my brain?”  
  
Kendall shrugged.  
  
“He said it was for the good of the future scientific community. And money. And to see if it was squishy.”  
  
“Don’t even think I don’t see you changing the subject.”  
  
“You’re too smart for your own good. You should stop it. Immediately,” Kendall wandered over to the fridge, grabbing a bottle of water. He downed half of it, and Logan watched the bob of his Adam’s apple until he paused and said, “It’s not like I planned it.”  
  
Which somehow made it worse, like if Logan could somehow identify the secret plan of seduction that Kendall had mapped out to get close to James, as close as Logan wanted to be, it would make things a little easier.  
  
The truth was, he wanted to know the exact moment that James fell for Kendall.  
  
 _Kendall_ , who may have been a knight in shining armor and plaid, but who hadn’t kissed James’s bruised knees when he fell off his bike when they were five, or camped out with him in the dead of winter because all he’d wanted to do was sleep in the woods for his birthday, or done a thousand other things that Logan had, side by side, practically since they were born. Logan had looked at James with a guilty blush staining his cheeks since he turned thirteen and realized that there were actually nicer things than faraway planets and dinosaur bones and mathematical equations. And then, when he turned fifteen, and his grandma died; Logan remembered it all so clearly. Kendall hadn’t been there then.  
  
Not when lightning lit the kitchen, and James had him pinned against the edge of the counter, fingers fumbling with his belt buckle before Logan could do more than gasp out a sob. Not the moment James’s callused hand slid inside his boxers; the moment Logan remembered with perfect clarity, from the hum of the refrigerator to shadows playing over James’s cheekbones to the fire lancing across the sky.  
  
“Don’t be sad.”  
  
“You don’t get to dictate my grief,” Logan had muttered, feeling caged in, but breathless. His heart in that moment was a supernova, an exploding star.  
  
“Don’t be sad,” James had instructed again in a whisper, fingers skidding over the head of his dick and Logan had barely been able to remember what he was supposed to be sad about anymore.  
  
Kendall hadn’t been there then, so why did James love him now?  
  
“I can’t believe you’re encouraging this,” Logan sputtered, trying to get across in that one sentence how betrayed and hurt and indignant he felt.  
  
He was mostly going for indignant, hoping that his moral righteousness would cover up the other, more prevalent emotions, because then Kendall might actually inquire what was really going on. And since Kendall had very little appreciation for tact or privacy, he’d get it out of Logan, one way or another if he wanted to.  
  
And he didn’t want Kendall to know. He didn’t want to tell him that even though he wasn’t sure how it had happened, Logan Mitchell loved James Diamond in this desperate, clingy way.  
  
“Encouraging what?” Kendall shrugged, a fluid movement from collar bone to shoulder blade to forearm, his head tilting to the side so that blond fell into his eyes.  
  
“You’re leading James on.”  
  
“I’m _not,_ ” Kendall actually looked offended, “He knows- well, he just knows. Okay?”  
  
“Not okay,” Logan objected, “Haven’t you even noticed that he’s falling for you?”  
  
Kendall shifted, his gaze suddenly downcast. He mumbled, “I might’ve.”  
  
“Then the good thing- the right thing to do would be to stop with the- the,” Logan found he couldn’t actually bring himself to say ‘fucking’ (because it sounded illicit and dirty and brought about vague memories of touching himself in the dead of night) or ‘having sex with him’ (for much of the same reason) or ‘making love to him’ (because that was just false advertising, and the thought of it made him ache), “Intercourse.”  
  
“Intercourse?” Kendall arched an eyebrow, “Really? I know you’re all virginal and pure, but-“  
  
Logan held up a hand. He felt somewhat relieved that James hadn’t seen fit to mention the lightning filled night that Logan only thought about with reverently held breaths and a too-fast pulse, but at the same time, his sex life wasn’t on trial here, “Do you love him?”  
  
“Like a brother,” was Kendall’s immediate reply.  
  
“But nothing more?”  
  
Kendall glanced away, “No.”  
  
“Then why won’t you just- stop?”  
  
Kendall frowned, “I can’t.”  
  
It seemed like James wasn’t the only one who thought spreading your legs was the only way to ward off guilt and grief and sadness.  
  
“Logan, look. This isn’t about you,” Kendall blinked, and then said slowly, “Unless, I mean- unless it is?”  
  
He felt his chest constrict.  
  
“We don’t have time for this,” Logan snapped.  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. We’ve gotta get to the studio. I’ll- uh, go wake James up.”  
  
Logan stumbled through his day like he was stuck in a waking dream. Everything he did felt softened and surreal, and for the first time ever, he didn’t pay attention in school.  
  
He couldn’t stop thinking about James or Kendall and James-and-Kendall, and why he was being left on the outside again. It hurt and it hurt and it hurt and he couldn’t think through all the pain.  
  
Sometimes, James and Kendall would lock themselves in a room for hours on end, and they wouldn’t have sex. Logan thought about those times, which hurt just as much, because he could hear them, the strains of James’s old guitar, stolen from his dad after the last hop back to Minnesota.  
  
They’d compose songs together, better than anything the band had ever tried to do when they were cooped up in the sound booth. And those songs, they ached like a punch to the gut, because they were just so sad.  
  
James and Kendall were two of the happiest people Logan had ever met. He didn’t understand how the words they crafted could be so very heartbreaking.  
  
And then, then there was the jealousy, because Logan wasn’t like them. He didn’t have music in his soul, or whatever. He liked to sing, and he was fortunate enough to be good at it. But he didn’t live and breathe it, the way James did, head buried in copies of Blender and Rolling Stone, trying to keep up with the newest and hottest sounds and techniques.  
  
He wasn’t like Kendall either; humming in the car or doing acapella in the shower, all of it inadvertent. Logan didn’t feel the need to fill up empty space with the sound of his own voice. He would rather bury his head in a book and lose himself in the feel of someone else’s. And the truth was, he didn’t really like hearing words out loud; they made less sense, they meant less.  
  
He liked to feel them under his fingertips, to let them reverberate through his head.  
  
He thought maybe the way Kendall and James spoke about music was a sort of secret language, one you couldn’t understand if you didn’t like the way a bassline got up under your ribs and made your heart bounce. Logan would sit outside listening, feeling like he was eavesdropping on spring’s touchdown, fresh and shiny and new when he was ancient and scraped raw. Like a thunder storm was rumbling in the distance, wild electricity he couldn’t contain in his tiny heart alone. Like he was being swallowed by waves, the chorus of the songs leaving him gasping for breath.  
  
The songs were punches, slow rib cracking kicks. James and Kendall made beautiful things, and all Logan wanted was to be a part of it.  
  
He never could.  
  
Just like this, like this thing between them that he couldn’t interfere with.  
  
Even if he wanted to, so badly.  
  
He just knew that he never, ever could.  
  


\---  
 

Except later that night, James was sitting on the couch, legs apart, hands behind his head, totally relaxed. When he saw Logan, he leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees, like he’d been waiting for him.  
  
“Kendall told me you, uh, talked.”  
  
“He did?” Logan couldn’t help the squeak in his voice, and he tried to insert some masculinity in his tone, “I mean, yeah, uh. We did.”  
  
James made this gesture that obviously meant _go on_ , but Logan didn’t know what to say.  
  
So he said the first thing that came to mind.  
  
“How do you feel about Kendall?” He blurted out.  
  
James looked away, and Logan felt something uncomfortably hot and prickly slice through his gut. There was this huge part of him that wanted to say something nasty, to make James feel whatever it was that had just shredded a little piece of Logan like a cheese grater. But he liked to think he had too much dignity for that, and besides, the thought of making James hurt wasn't a nice one.   
  
It wouldn’t solve anything.  
  
“I think,” James paused, “the important question is how you feel about me.”  
  
He didn’t say it like a question. It was like he already knew the answer.  
  
Logan hated that he was so obvious. He was the lone only child in their group, the only person who’d never had a reason to learn how to hide what he was feeling from a nosy sibling. Kendall had Katie, and Carlos’s parents procreated like bunnies, and James had practically been raised by his older brother (who was in a band, overly spoiled his little brother, and was very possibly morally bankrupt, which sort of explained where James had learned to be quite so easy with his affections).  
  
Logan’s parents never tried to snoop in his business.  
  
He was the good boy, the kid who locked himself in his room at night to study instead of looking at porn like a normal teenager.  
  
Truth was, his parents hadn’t actually even known what to do with him. They weren’t the geniuses everyone seemed to presume upon meeting him. Their jobs were every day; mundane. Neither of them had even graduated college. When Logan turned out to be some kind of child prodigy, they’d been happy, sure. But his intelligence was like some kind of gaping cavern that stood between them.  
  
He’d never known how to cross it.  
  
They’d never even tried.  
  
It wasn’t as sad as it sounded; Logan was close to his mom and dad. He loved them so much it felt ridiculous sometimes, that two people could represent the whole world. They, in turn, had done everything they could to make sure that Logan had the kind of life they’d both missed out on as children. But even so, he always thought that maybe they saw his ambition as some kind of failing, like he tried so hard because he didn’t want to follow in their footsteps.  
  
They loved him, but they didn’t understand him.  
  
The plight of every sullen teenager, really, but Logan would have given anything for it to have been a misunderstanding based on hormones and feelings he’d grow out of.  
  
His brain was something he never would.  
  
He wondered if it scared them, that he knew so much more than they ever had. It scared him. He didn’t like to think about it very often. It made him feel…lonely.  
  
“Logan,” James said again, voice taking on an unfamiliar edge, half warning, half simple curiosity, “Do you- have a thing for me?”  
  
Logan looked away. He hated to lie, and James could read his expression easier than a glossy magazine. Still, he could have denied it. He could have said that he had no idea what James was talking about. He could have ignored the fact that he was pretty terrible at saying things that weren’t true and just tried to avoid the inevitable trainwreck.  
  
He didn’t.  
  
James was every inch the male model, except for his hands. He grabbed Logan’s face, the rough calluses of his hockey player thumbs stroking over his cheekbones, over the corners of Logan’s lips. He looked straight into Logan’s eyes, and Logan knew he couldn’t lie.  
  
Softly, he said, “I wish you’d love me instead.”  
  
He pulled away, standing up and shrugging. He didn’t know what it meant, if it was his way of saying that he knew James never could, or if it was just some kind of huge ‘fuck you’, but he let the gesture speak for itself and made to walk away.  
  
“ _Logan_. Wait.”  
  
Logan didn’t want to wait.  
  
He wanted to go to his room, curl up into a little ball, and listen to his iPod so loud it would blow out his eardrums. He wanted to call his parents and rage against them; ask them why they hadn’t been more involved in his life, made him better at lying with his face and his words.  
  
He absolutely did not want to turn around and see the way James was looking at him; to see the pity in his best friend’s eyes. But there was something powerful in James’s voice.  
  
Something that made his feet stop without first consulting his brain.  
  
“Do you- want to come to my room?” James asked, and his voice sounded rough, choked, and just a bit hesitant, “Just for tonight?”  
  
Logan wanted to say no. He wanted to ask how often Kendall had been invited into James’s bed, and if James had even washed the sheets since the last time.  
  
He didn’t ask.  
  
He didn’t say no.


	2. Should It Be A Thorn In My Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If there was such a thing as god or destiny or fate, Logan thought that they probably didn’t give too much, that they couldn’t grant too many wishes lest they be overwrought.
> 
> So the one thing they always let be true is that if people were meant to be together, they would be.
> 
> Eventually.

Logan woke up to the blaring sound of a Lady Gaga song on James’s radio alarm clock and an empty bed.  
  
He groaned and buried his face in the sheets, trying to drown out the music. He was very much not a morning person. But James’s pillow smelled like a mixture of James’s fancy tropical shampoo and manspray mixed with the earthier smell of the herbal conditioner Kendall’s mom bought.   
  
The herbal conditioner that Kendall and Logan both used. It bothered him that he couldn’t figure out if the lingering scent was from his own head or that of a certain blond.  
  
The door to the room was closed. He didn’t know if James had left or if he was grabbing breakfast or- that was the thing. Logan didn’t know anything, and it wasn’t a feeling he liked very much.   
  
He’d only been lying awake for a few minutes before he heard a noise outside the door. It was James, and it sounded like he had just caught a glimpse of himself having a very bad hair day. Except that wasn’t it, because a beat later, Logan heard Kendall, mumbling an apology.   
  
And then-  
  
“What are you doing?” Kendall mumbled, his voice strong but faded behind the door.   
  
“I-“ he heard James’s voice falter, and Logan could almost feel his gaze boring through the wood, into the room, weighing the consequences of whatever he would say next.   
  
When the silence went on for too long, Logan felt this tight, gnawing fear that James had gone with the most awful choice possible, kissing Kendall right then and there in the hallway. Kissing Kendall even though he knew Logan was only a few feet away.   
  
He scrambled out of bed. His hands were moving to push open the door before he’d made the conscious decision to actually do it.   
  
They weren’t kissing.   
  
But Kendall’s hand was resting casually on James’s hip, and James was leaning into the touch like maybe kissing Kendall was all he really ever wanted to do.   
  
Logan cleared his throat. Kendall’s expression went carefully blank as he glanced between Logan and James. He said, “Oh.”  
  
And then he began to walk into the kitchen. James grabbed his arm and said, “Kendall, wait.”  
  
Logan watched, breath held, as Kendall replied, “Dude. Just- no. It’s not. It’s not _anything,_ okay? I’ve got a pool date with Jo.”  
  
James visibly folded in upon himself, crumpling. Logan wanted to slam Kendall’s head into a wall.   
  
The two of them watched as Kendall fled the apartment. James turned back to Logan, eyes wide and hurt.   
  
“Logan, I-“  
  
“It’s okay.”  
  
James stared at him, his expression inscrutable. Finally he asked, “You sure?”   
  
“Yeah. It’s fine.”  
  
It wasn’t even close to fine, but Logan had known what he was getting himself into the second James had invited him into his bed. Logan stepped forward and kissed James, right there in the hallway, because he felt like he had to make a point.   
  
“I don’t know what you want from me,” James breathed into his mouth, after a beat. Logan’s fingers were resting against his hip, resting against the same spot Kendall had been touching seconds before.   
  
“I want-” Logan bit his lip and thought about the things that he wanted, thought about how once upon a time James belonged only to him.   
  
How when they were five they would swim in the lake behind school, fighting over who would be king of the mountain on top of this big, water slick rock right in the center, both of their moms floating on nearby inflatable rafts. How no one ever won the title of king, and they’d just lie on top of that rock, sunning themselves like baby seals until their moms snuck up behind them, tickling them until the entire quiet forest was filled with their squealing laughter.   
  
How James had always lived next door to Logan, had always been there, been James, until he joined the hockey team and suddenly became a part of James-and-Kendall, attached at the hip because of their deep, fervent love of beating shit up with sticks. How Logan had to join the stupid team even though he hated sports and was kind of a pacifist and was pretty sure that he was _legitimately_ going to do die during his first game; but James protected him from all of the biggest kids, just like always.   
  
How they’d become James-and-Logan-and-Kendall-and-Carlos, best friends, but always together.   
  
It was like James and Logan, next door neighbors, kings of the mountain, had never even existed. And Logan wanted that back, wanted all of it, wanted a day to have James to himself; but ever since Kendall first stepped foot in their lives it was like James had fucking tunnel vision. Like there was no one he could ever admire as much, love as much, want as much as Kendall _fucking_ Knight, even though Logan had been there his entire life; supporting his stupid plans and helping him to be great.   
  
Logan didn’t know how to tell James any of that, how to tell him that he’d always been the center of Logan’s world when Logan clearly had not even been close to the center of James’s, so instead he tugged at the collar of James’s t-shirt and kissed him again, soft and needy.   
  
“Logan,” James tried again, but it was muted against Logan’s mouth and Logan didn’t want to hear it. He was smart enough to know that none of this was going to end well for him, but there was a big difference between knowing something in your brain and wanting it in your heart, in your gut, and Logan was not going to deny himself one more chance to have this. Not when James seemed content to allow it. 

  
\---

  
Statistically speaking, taking into account crushes and puppy love and eliminating from the pool, there was a very, very low chance that a person’s first love would be their last. And yet after that first time, Logan slipped into James’s bed every night like clockwork, knowing that the sheets had been slept in by someone other than him.  
  
He didn’t care about statistics. Not anymore.

\---

  
They had sex at an industry party, locked in one of the bathrooms that smelled like pineapple air freshener. James came with a shout, buried inside of Logan, while outside a cater-waiter asked a young ingénue if she wanted to try the tuna tataki.

  
\---

  
Logan messed up his verses at a live concert two weeks into whatever this fucked up thing was.   
  
He was fine, better than fine, he thought, until he noticed the way that James brushed up against Kendall in the middle of the bridge. Kendall smiled into the touch, and Logan could almost imagine the way his breath was hot against James’s skin-  
  
His voice cracked, words falling to the wayside. His mouth gaped open like a fish and it was only Carlos’s quick elbow to his ribs that reminded him he was supposed to be doing something.   
  
When he picked up the verse again, he tried to tell himself that his reaction was normal. He kept telling himself that later, when Gustavo wanted his head on a pike outside of Rocque Records. _Normal_ , he thought. _Normal. Jealousy is normal_.   
  
In a relationship, one person is always more invested than the other. That’s just the way it works out. Perfect balance was impossible, Logan knew, outside of nature.   
  
The laws of entropy always applied. 

 

\---

They fucked in the back of the Big Time Rush-mobile, hands slipping along the shiny siding of the Cadillac while James rode Logan’s cock. They were right underneath the Hollywood sign, and all Logan could see was James, outlined by all the things that he loved about California; neon lights in _pinkgreenelectricblue_ , yellow like Gatorade, the whole world _abeatapulseathrum_ in his veins, his ears roaring with the sound of the highways and the crashing of waves miles away.

  
\---

  
A few nights later, Logan was sitting in the living room, trying to focus on a TV show with Carlos, James, Kendall, and Jo. But really he was watching Jo crawl onto Kendall’s lap, watching the way she settled into a kneel on the couch, straddling him. She looped her arms around his neck and looked into his eyes before she kissed him. It was intimate, and it was wrong, because Logan had seen Kendall do the same thing to James, had seen a shaky exhale turn into a desperate kiss between them.   
  
Those nights stood out, clear in his mind, from the blue of the swimming pool to the familiar tile pattern of Kendall’s counter back home.   
  
Kendall had his arms wrapped around Jo’s waist, his coke can sweating into the side of her blouse, and when he kissed her it was soft and sweet and nothing at all like the passion Logan had seen between him and James.   
  
Logan felt like he was in the midst of a train wreck waiting to happen. That everyone knew was going to happen except for maybe Jo, who just wanted this; a sweet, chaste kiss from her boyfriend. He wanted to put a stop to it, but there wasn’t any way to do it.   
  
Not without hurting everyone involved.   
  
Logan figured the best thing he could do was let them all grab the last bits of happiness they could before the collision. Even if he was suffering. Even if they were all suffering through it, even Kendall, who’d never been able to stand not knowing his own mind. Logan thought it must have been killing him; wanting James but not wholly understanding why. Wanting Jo while knowing that it would end in disaster.   
  
It didn’t make him any less of a bastard, but Logan wouldn’t shun him for it. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that Kendall had masterminded some grand plan to fuck everyone over. He was a confused teenage boy, just like the rest of them. He was the same boy that taught Logan how to pull off a slapshot, the same kid who spent countless hours reclining upside down on Logan’s bed while Logan pulled all night study sessions. And as much as Logan hated him for what he was doing, he couldn’t force himself to believe that any of it was on purpose.   
  
He could feel the way James had gone stiff beside him, watching Kendall and Jo, and he put a hand on his thigh, leaning in close. He could smell the manspray on James’s neck, could breathe in everything that he was, and he whispered, “Let’s get out of here.”  
  
James didn’t say anything for a second, but then he nodded, like talking was too hard right then.   
  
They went to the pool, dangling their feet in the water in this complete, strange silence until Logan couldn’t take it anymore.   
  
“Let’s swim,” Logan said. James’s gaze darted to the pool, and Logan could practically see the thoughts running through his mind. He was thinking that the pool was his place with Kendall. He was remembering the same night that Logan was; the image of the two of them seared onto his brain.  
  
He was thinking that fucking Logan in the pool would be sacrilegious to the memory of that night.  
  
He was thinking that Kendall would deserve it.  
  
Logan could see the exact second James decided to be vindictive.  
  
They stripped down to their boxers and spent a few minutes swimming around, acting like dorks and pretending that this wasn’t going anywhere. That neither of them had ulterior motives. It didn’t last.  
  
Logan was trying to dunk James under the water and get his stupid hair wet when the tables got turned. James ended up pinning Logan against the side of the pool, erection pressing between them.  
  
“I want you,” he said. His eyes were dark, but his hair was silvered by the moon and his body was golden, backlit by the pool light. He traced a line from Logan’s ear to his jaw, finger dipping in the hollows of his throat and then lower, mapping the shadows of currents playing against his chest.   
  
Beneath the surface of the water, Logan’s fingers clenched into fists, because he had a perfect image of another night like this captured like a snapshot in his mind; a vivid recollection of Kendall’s hair glowing like a halo, James wrapped around him like an anaconda. Logan couldn’t reconcile the sharp stabbing pain of the memory, a knife in his gut, with the all consuming desire to reenact the moment, to prove that he could do it better. Want was a slow burn in his stomach, his lungs, mixed with the dizzying scents of chlorine and James, _always_ James.   
  
The boy who had crawled under his skin and wouldn’t leave.   
  
Logan wanted to turn to starlight, wanted to become silvered and new under the vast Hollywood sky. James’s skin tasted like chlorine and sweat and a little bit like Cuda, bitter under Logan’s tongue. He curled into his body, letting James’s fingers trace the curve of his ass, letting him dip in while he rubbed up against James’s thigh.  
  
Water was not actually the best lubricant in the world, and even though it was easy to open Logan up against the press of James’s fingers, it still burned when he pushed in, the natural sheen of pre-come already washed away. It got easier after that though, and Logan let James fuck him, back scraping against the concrete siding of the pool, nails biting half moons into the skin of James’s shoulders. Logan could feel every inch of James inside of him, heated flesh against muscle. Every time James drove in harder, deeper, Logan’s dick twitched with pleasure, ass tightening around James’s cock, which made him growl with lust and the whole cycle repeated. James’s hand shifted between them, skimming over Logan’s dick in feather light touches, water squelching between the palm of his hand, bubbling out from between his fingers.  
  
They tried to keep the noise to a minimum, but the lapping waves created by their bodies soon turned to splashing, no matter how hard they tried. Logan could feel everything, from the hair gently curling around the base of James's cock to the slap of his balls against his ass to the edge of the pool behind his head, cutting into his scalp. Logan could feel the force behind James’s thighs, the muscles working from his ass to his back as he thrust into him. It was like fire sparked inside of Logan every time James moved. He wanted more of it, needed more of it, and he was rocking down onto James’s dick, the buoyancy of the water making it easier for him to get some kind of control, even pinned like he was.  
  
Logan’s orgasm ripped through him like a sodium light, a brilliant flare of pleasure in which nothing else existed.  
  
When he looked up towards the windows of their apartment, he thought he saw a face.

  
\---

  
Logan went to ask Carlos if he could borrow a pair of his sunglasses, but he wasn't in his room. Logan found him sitting on the couch instead.  
  
James and Kendall were locked up in James’s room, writing songs. Again. Every plaintive twang of the guitar made Logan’s heart twinge in time.  
  
Not for the first time, Logan wished he could speak the very special language of music, but no matter how hard he studied the curlicue notes of a song on paper, he couldn’t seem to force it to live in his chest, in his lungs. He could sing, but he could not breathe a song, and he thought maybe that was the thing that set him apart from Kendall. And if that was true, there was nothing at all that he could do about it.  
  
He never dreamt about singing; only caring for those lungs that created such beauty.

  
\---

  
Big Time Rush got nominated for an award. Up and coming artist.  
  
James wanted to win. Logan hadn’t actually seen him look so determined since they auditioned for Gustavo. The fierceness in his eyes was simultaneously familiar and foreign. But after it happened, Logan didn’t sleep with James for a week. James spent every night locked in the room Logan shared with Kendall, and Logan couldn’t, wouldn’t go in there. Instead he slept in James’s bed. His sheets smelled like Kendall’s cologne, but Logan buried his head deeper into the folds anyway.

  
\---

  
“Do you know where James is? I haven’t seen him today,” Kendall said. It was a day before the awards show, and Logan knew he wasn’t telling the truth. He wasn’t a very good liar. Kendall had probably woken up with James’s head pillowed on his chest.  
  
But since their last argument about James, Kendall was trying to act like nothing had even happened. Like Logan had no idea what was going on with his personal life. Logan thought about calling him out on it, thought about telling him that he knew. He didn’t, because it wasn’t worth it. Kendall knew better than to question Logan’s intelligence, and if he thought he was fooling anybody, then he was much, much dumber than Logan had ever given him credit for. Logan just was not up for games.  
  
"No."  
  
“Are you sure? I just- you guys have been spending a lot of time together lately.”  
  
“Are you jealous?”  
  
Kendall shrugged.   
  
“Yeah. I am. I don’t mean to be.”  
  
“Then why?”  
  
“Logan- despite what you think, I don’t have an explanation for everything.”  
  
“Are you going to keep fucking him?” Logan watched Kendall’s face change, a myriad of emotions flashing lightning quick, one after another; so many that he couldn’t catch what they all were.   
  
“What do you think will happen if I don’t?”  
  
“This can’t go on forever. James is in love with you.” Saying it out loud was a stabbing pain in his lungs, in his chest, in his stomach. It made him feel vaguely nauseous, almost dizzy. “You can’t just keep pity fucking him until he decides to move on to someone else. Because- that won’t happen.”  
  
And saying that made his mouth go dry, black spots dance behind his eyes. Love was like an illness.   
  
“I’m not- it isn’t pity.”  
  
“It isn’t just pity, you mean,” he said, bitingly, and Kendall nodded, pale and small.  
  
“It isn’t just pity.”  
  
And Logan knew he wasn’t being fair, because Kendall couldn’t help who he loved either. He wasn’t exactly notorious for making the smartest choices around, but he tried and he tried and he tried to do whatever he could to please his friends, without ever thinking of himself. Of course he loved James, in his own way.   
  
It just wasn’t the right way. It wasn’t the way James deserved.   
  
“I want to kill you for what you’re doing,” Logan said quietly, and the words surprised him, because he hadn’t known it was true until he said it out loud. He had so much anger and resentment bubbling beneath the surface of his heart, and so much of it was directed towards Kendall, no matter how unfair that was.   
  
He couldn’t bring himself to do the right thing. He couldn't bring himself to say anything hurtful to James. And he couldn’t understand why Kendall would do any of this, to either of them. So he let himself simmer, and he let himself hate the three of them.   
  
“I know,” Kendall said. He seemed sad, and more than a little helpless, but Logan couldn’t bring himself to fully care. Life was supposed to be easy. You didn’t lie and you didn’t cheat unless you want to get lied to or cheated on. You didn’t fuck over your friends unless you wanted your friends to fuck you over. This stuff was simple.  
  
But it didn’t always feel that way.

\---

  
James didn’t come back to his room again that night. But he stole through Logan’s dreams like a thief. Logan wasn’t sure if he had any love left to take, but there always seemed to be more. It was an endless wellspring in his heart.

  
\---

  
The night of the awards show, James and Kendall got into a fight. Logan never figured out what it was about. Maybe Jo. She was Kendall’s date that night, and he was looking at her in her pretty yellow dress like she was the best thing in the entire world. Kendall loved her, Logan thought, and he was glad for it. It proved that just because their love for each other had always been so strong, so inbred that it didn’t make their ability to love someone outside the group any less. Which meant that even when this thing between Kendall and James and Logan inevitably crashed and burned, Logan could hold onto hope.  
  
That’s what he thought when he was feeling really dark, at least.  
  
But the fight was good for him. James was nervous, fidgety. His hands bunched in his dress slacks, and he looked like a loud noise might make him take off like a shot. Logan could only think of one way to get him to relax. And for the first time in weeks, when Logan tried to get James’s attention, he succeeded.  
  
James was on him like a feral animal. Before they were even free of the crowd, they were kissing, tongues deep in each other’s mouths, wet and hot and moaning. James shoved Logan into the last stall in the restrooms, already working on getting the front of his pants undone. And Logan just stared, unable to process, unable to get past the fact that James, in his pristine outfit- the one he’d carefully selected after two weeks of stressing about giving off the right image- was kneeling on the age-stained tile of the men’s bathroom.  
  
His hair was a mess, ruffled from Logan’s fingers. His lips were bruised a deep red, a flush high in his cheeks. And he had the nerve to grin, tongue darting out to trace his bottom lip, eyes dark, before he moved forward, mouthing the shape of Logan’s cock through the thin fabric of his dress slacks.   
  
Logan was never sure what made him pull James up to his feet by his tie, undoing the knot and pulling it free. James frowned, but Logan was busy examining the silk, turning it over in his hands.   
  
James’s brow furrowed and he said in an exhalation, “Logan, what-“  
  
Realization dawned across his features as Logan took hold of his hands, those stupid long fingered hands that drove him completely insane. Logan pulled the tie tight around James’s wrists. He couldn’t actually tie it for fear of James bitching about the dry cleaning bill, but he twisted the ends through, looping the tie over and over again until it was tight enough that James wouldn’t be able to pull it off without help. James watched him work with intense eyes, hungry.   
  
Logan unbuttoned the front of his suit jacket, and then his perfectly starched shirt. He licked a line along the cut of James’s abdomen, fascinated by the way his muscles jumped beneath his skin. Like he was ticklish, but trying his best to hold still.  
  
When he took James into his mouth, it was while he watched; beautiful eyes dark with lust and something Logan couldn’t quite identify, his hips stuttering against Logan’s ministrations. His wrists strained against the blue silk, fingers grasping at each other, but he didn’t actually try to get free, and yeah, Logan decided he could work with this.  
  
He would always remember the night of the awards show with perfect clarity.   
  
Whenever his eyes flickered closed, he could see the figure James cut in his suit, a silhouette that would never leave him. He could feel the way James’s muscles jumped in his thighs.   
  
And if the night was just right- quiet enough, nostalgic enough- Logan would be able to hear the way James had chanted his name, a mantra, like maybe it actually meant something.  
  
They announced the winners while Logan and James were in the restroom.  
  
It wasn’t Big Time Rush. James didn’t care. He was too busy cumming down Logan’s throat.

  
\---

  
Things didn’t truly go bad until six months in.   
  
The thing was, Logan wanted James to love him, desperately. It would have been perfect, if one day James turned around and said that it was never Kendall. If he said that it was always Logan that he was really after, just like the best part of a romantic comedy.   
  
But real life didn’t work that way.   
  
Logan was walking down the hallway towards the apartment when he saw the two of them, making out. It was this awful, intimate moment. Kendall’s hands were wound tight into James’s hair, and James had his arms wrapped around Kendall’s waist like he wanted to pull him into his own body.   
  
Logan stood there and watched, heart breaking.   
  
He’d always known what he was getting himself into. But he’d avoiding thinking about it. He’d avoided the full weight of what it all meant.   
  
He couldn’t avoid it anymore.   
  
But he wasn’t strong enough to end it.   
  
\---  
  
“Dude, what’s your problem?” James pulled at Logan’s sweater, peering over his shoulder at the textbook he was poring over.   
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“It doesn’t sound like nothing,” James said dubiously. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“Logan,” James wrapped his arms around Logan’s waist, head resting against his collarbone, and it was so much like what he’d done to Kendall just hours before that Logan couldn’t take it.  
  
“Stop- wanting him,” he yelled, the words ripping his throat raw, and he knew James could see the word _love_ , hanging there in the air between them.   
  
The one word Logan couldn’t ever bring himself to say out loud, not to James.   
  
But he was thinking it. He was thinking, _Stop loving him. Just stop. You have to stop. Please_.    
  
“I can’t,” James said, and Logan felt it all the way to his bones, pain in the marrow, pain that felt like it would kill him.   
  
And the worst part was, Logan understood.   
  
He felt the same way about James. 

\---

  
Carlos was the one who ended up coming into his room, a month later. Logan hadn’t ended anything with James, but he was having a bad week. He was having a bad life, at this point, but that week had been honestly hideous. Gustavo was riding him, he’d gotten a C in one of his classes, and his mom was pushing him to apply to college. And then there was the ever present problem of Kendall and James.   
  
Logan had decided to deal with it in the most mature way he knew.   
  
He was hiding out beneath his covers and ignoring everyone who came calling. Right up until Carlos stilled his shaking shoulders and said, “Dude. You’re better than this.”   
  
“I have no idea what you mean.”   
  
Carlos sighed and settled on the bed beside him. “I mean James might think the sun revolves around him, but it doesn’t. You need to get out. Get away.”   
  
Logan peeked out from beneath his comforter. “But- how am I supposed to do that? The band. I can’t leave you guys.”   
  
“You can, and you will. It’s time to stop clinging to our dreams and go find your own.” Carlos shrugged. He gently pried the comforter from Logan’s grip, slipping under the covers and snuggling into his side. Then he said, “I’m going to need a really good doctor when I become the world’s best stuntman.”   
  
Logan snorted, although it kind of sounded like a sob. “Oh, god. Please, don’t. There are only so many bones a person can break.”   
  
He felt Carlos’s chin in the indent of his clavicle, and Logan thought that he’d missed this; missed having a friend he felt nothing more than friendship for. Friendship had its own ups and downs, its own slew of complications, but it was all so much less messy.   
  
Which made him realize how badly he’d fucked things up with James and Kendall. He shouldn’t have gotten involved. He should have run fast and far from their little drama. And now he wasn’t sure if he was strong enough to do it. To walk away.   
  
He’d never known a life without them.   
  
“Do you think it will be better? Out there, in the world?”   
  
“I don’t know,” Carlos said, “Maybe not better, or worse. Maybe just- different?”   
  
“Different,” Logan murmured, breathing in the scent of his friend’s understated cologne.   
  
“Different isn’t so bad, you know. I think we could all use a change.”   
  
“But we’re not going to be able to come back to all of this.”   
  
“No,” Carlos agreed, “But do you really want to? We had years and years to be great. And we were.”   
  
“But we’re not so much, not anymore.”   
  
“Exactly. So get out there. Find a new way to be great. It’s not like any of us will stop being your friend.”   
  
“It’s going to be lonely, though.”   
  
“Yeah. Probably,” Carlos actually looked a little scared by the prospect, “But one day it won’t be. One day, things will get better.”   
  
“I don’t know if I can wait for that to happen.”   
  
“Doesn’t matter. We’ve got no choice, Logan. And if it gets so horrible, you pick up the phone. You call me. I’ve always got your back.”   
  
“And I’ve got yours.”   
  
“Doesn’t even need saying. So let’s go. Big time.”

\---

  
Logan didn’t actually end it for another few months. He thought about it, but every time he worked up enough courage for it, James was pulling him into a supply closet or his bedroom or the sound booth, his mouth hot on Logan’s skin, his dick hard in his jeans.  
  
But then he’d go right back to Kendall.   
  
Logan was a smart kid. He understood things. He grasped every angle of what James was doing, of James’s weakness and of his strength in those moments. He really understood.   
  
Understanding didn’t make it hurt any less. Because the one thing James could never explain away was why he didn’t love Logan enough. Why he wanted Kendall more.   
  
He probably didn’t even know himself, if it was as simple as chemistry and attraction and clicking the right way.   
  
James came to him on a breezy fall night when Logan was studying a medical text in the Palmwoods Park. James held his head in his hands, upset. He didn’t say why. He didn’t explain. He didn’t have to.   
  
For James, it was always Kendall.   
  
“I think maybe I fucked up,” James finally said, raking a hand through his hair, “I think- Kendall’s never going to feel the same way, is he?”  
  
Logan’s breathing turned sharp, ragged, and he forced himself to say, “No. It’s not you, James. He can’t.”  
  
“Why can’t he?”  
  
And James’s voice was strangled, choked with everything he felt that he wasn’t saying. Logan wanted to make it stop, to make the rigid set of his shoulders and the tense line of his jaw relax. He wanted to make the pain in his eyes go away. But he didn’t know how.   
  
What was the use of being so smart if he couldn’t do anything when it mattered?   
  
“I don’t know,” Logan replied softly, “I don’t think he does either.”  
  
He watched the curve of James’s spine and wondered how much more weight the both of them could bear.   
  
And then he said, “I can’t do this anymore.”  
  
Those words. They felt like the end of days.   
  
“ _Logan_ -“  
  
“No. We both deserve better.”  
  
And just like that, it was over. 

\---

  
If there was such a thing as god or destiny or fate, Logan thought that they probably didn’t give too much, that they couldn’t grant too many wishes lest they be overwrought.  
  
So the one thing they always let be true is that if people were meant to be together, they would be.  
  
Eventually.


	3. Taking Different Roads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life was not a movie, but Logan wanted it to be. He wanted the swelling crescendo of music and that dramatic bit where the starcrossed lovers dashed off to meet each other, crashing into each other’s arms like there was nothing else they could possibly do. But real life wasn’t anything like that, and there was no music at all except for the gentle hum of James’s breath. It was just him and the cold steps and all the apologies in James’s eyes.

Everything ended.  
  
Logan was never sure who said they wanted to leave the band first, because by the time it happened, they were all thinking it. And it was sad and it was tragic and it was _life_. There was never a day that they didn’t know it was coming, the same way the threat of college loomed over them in high school. But it was nice, for a while; day dreaming. Pretending that they could last forever.  
  
It didn’t happen all at once, of course. After the fight with James, Logan wanted to take back everything he’d said. He wanted to go back and announce that he’d changed his mind.   
  
He even slipped once and ended up fucking James at Rocque Records, quick and hard and breathless.   
  
Afterwards, he’d yanked up his jeans and left, feeling like a total cretin. It was right after that Logan sent in his first application for college. As he did it he knew that he was ending the best thing he ever had, all to run away from a boy with eyes like fire, eyes that set his heart aflame.   
  
Logan was nineteen years old when Big Time Rush officially bit the dust. And even though he was never sure who it was who said the words, he knew that it was the college acceptance letter clutched in his fist that prompted them.    
  
The day he’d packed his bags for LAX, James came to say goodbye. He stood in the doorway of the room that Logan had shared with Kendall for the past few years. “You’re really leaving?”  
  
“I really am,” Logan confirmed, trying to focus on folding his boxers instead of meeting James’s eyes.  
  
“Why?”  
  
That was a loaded question. Somewhere in it, Logan knew James was asking, _because of me?_  
  
“What is there for me here, James? The band is done. We all know it. And I’ve got- school.”  
  
“You could go to school here.”  
  
James was right. Logan had gotten into every premed program from Stanford to UCLA.  
  
“Why would I stay here?” There was a pattern to folding boxers; a rhythm. Like the rhythm that Logan never quite seemed to get down when James and Kendall knew it by heart. Like the rhythm they made alone, together, together, alone between their bodies and their hearts and the strings of James’s dad’s old guitar. “Because of you? You want me to skip my flight- because of you?”  
  
“If I said yes, would you stay?”  
  
“Probably,” Logan admitted, because a part of him was still foolish enough to think there was still time. He and James could still be the kings of LA. They could still lie in the California sun and own the city the same way they’d owned that lake back in Minnesota, so long ago.  
  
James opened his mouth, one corner of his lower lip dark red from nibbling on it and worrying at it. Then he said, “You’re going to be an amazing doctor.”  
  
It was one of the nicest things that James had ever said to him, and it felt like he’d taken a pencil and stabbed it straight into Logan’s sternum.  
  
“I hate you,” Logan said quietly. “I really- James, god. I _hate_ you.”  
  
“Logan-“  
  
“I asked you to love me instead of Kendall, and you just couldn’t- why couldn’t you?” the words ripped from his throat, and he was yelling; yelling so loud that all of 2J had to have been able to hear him, but he didn’t care. He wouldn’t even be around come evening. He’d be thousands of miles away, and this would be a nightmare that he could finally forget. “I’ve been in love with you since we were kids, and Kendall’s all you can fucking see.”  
  
James stared at him, his eyes wide. Logan loved his eyes. He loved the way the colors shifted, a gradient of topaz and honey and chocolate with flecks of deep olive. He loved the angles of James’s jaw and the slope of his nose and the curve of his ears, and he loved the way James looked so hurt and ashamed.  
  
There was not a single part of this wrecked boy that he did not love.  
  
But he hadn’t lied. He hated James too, every single inch of his being, for how much loving him had cost. If he’d known at age five what James would put him through, Logan thought he would have run in the opposite direction.  
  
Logan slammed the lid shut on his suitcase, trying to close the zipper and then giving up, because it was hard to make a dramatic exit when the pull was stuck on stray fabric. He could finish packing later. He shoved past James, making sure to get him in the side with his shoulder extra hard, like this was a hockey match and not the last fight they’d ever have. He clenched his teeth and his fists and tried to fight back the emotion rising in his throat. He didn’t know how to deal with so much sadness and anger at the same time. Lashing out was the only action that felt anything like good.  
  
“Wait, Logan,” James stepped in front of the door, blocking what would have been a perfectly executed exit. Logan tried to shove him aside, but James was built as solid as any statue. It didn’t work. James dropped from to the floor in one graceful motion, onto his knees. “ _Please_.”  
  
Logan wasn’t sure if it was the memory of James on his knees at the awards show that stilled his anger or the fact that James’s voice always had some kind of power over him, even now, even when his hate felt like a living creature in his chest.  
  
“What do you want?” Logan stared down at James, at his fierce eyes and the shame and the conflict evident in the way he gnawed his lip. James reached up, and Logan could feel his long fingers at his sides, stroking up towards his chest. His heart pounded, like it was trying to escape, like it was trying to jump into James’s hands. Anything to stay here, in California, where he belonged.  
  
He thought that this might be the moment. The one where everything changed, because James finally said all the things that Logan had been waiting for.  
  
Except it wasn’t.  
  
James pulled him down and crushed their lips together, bruising, tonguing Logan’s mouth open until he was stealing all the air from his lungs. His fingertips pressed hard into the hollows of Logan’s cheekbone, of his throat, and Logan felt like James was trying to devour him whole, to cage him in with his mouth and his body and his passion. At first Logan couldn’t help but kiss back, but press forward into James until he could feel every single hard line of him. He was on his knees too, nearly straddling James before he realized that James hadn’t actually _said_ anything.  
  
So Logan pulled away. He grabbed his suitcase with its stuck zipper and got Mrs. Knight to give him a ride. He got hugs from Carlos and Katie and Kendall, even though he didn’t really want the latter, and he said his goodbyes. Even James got a terse wave.  
  
When Logan sat in the airport, he watched the planes taking off and said goodbye to the two little boys in Minnesota who lived in his memory.  
  
Those two little boys had wanted to rule over mountains and cities, but now Logan knew. They would never actually be the kings of anything at all.

  
\---

  
Logan traded in seven am limos to the studio for seven am lectures. All the intro classes were too early, too crowded. He interchanged palm trees and sunshine for the blazing colors of autumn and the sharp chill of winter. A lot of the kids in his classes were younger than him, fresh out of high school and full of big dreams; but Logan didn’t regret putting off college until now. Learning took his mind off things. He could lose himself in equations, in the human nervous system, in the thousand different ways the body was heartrendingly fragile.  
  
Time slid like mercury through his fingers; sometimes a slow, sluggish trickle and sometimes an uncontrollable rush. It was weird trying to figure out the mechanics of life without his friends at his side. He’d never thought about doing so because he’d never once _wanted_ to do so. The end of the band wasn’t supposed to be the end of their friendship. But college, man. It was hectic.   
  
Or at least that’s what Logan told himself when he’d miss calls and _forget_ to return them. He knew that James was busy working on his own album, and that Kendall had headed off to higher education as well, like he was trying to chase in Logan’s footsteps. He’d weaseled his way into a hockey program, and he was planning on _making it_. Logan had no doubt that he would.   
  
It didn’t mean he wanted to pick up Kendall’s calls.   
  
What he did want, so badly, was to be better. To be kinder. Braver. Stronger. But he didn’t know how. James’s existence cut so deep that he felt like he’d never heal from it. And keeping in contact with his best friends when their very memory was like an open, gaping wound? It was just so damn hard.   
  
What was worse was that Logan didn’t know how to live on his own. He’d never made friends very easily, always depending on James or Kendall or Carlos to introduce him to people.   
  
Logan had started a whole new life, and he was ridiculously lonely.   
  
Carlos was the only person he had left. He was the only person left guaranteed to pick up the phone at any given moment, four in the morning or afternoon; and if he couldn’t, he’d text, say sorry but could he call back soon? It was a nice thought knowing that he still had someone, if he wanted.   
  
No, more than that. It was almost _intoxicating_ to know that a person cared that much, especially when no one else did, when the terror of a new place and a new life made Logan feel like he was drowning. This teensy part of him was always scared that he was a bad enough person that he’d take advantage of it, that he’d call and text and force Carlos to visit so often that he’d never have time for his own life.   
  
But as much as Logan tried to give Carlos distance, they still talked, all the time, and sometimes Logan would confide in him about how badly he missed Kendall and James.   
  
They’d have conversations like the time that Logan told him how he’d always wanted a brother when he was younger. Someone to protect him, to look after him. He wasn’t the most masculine kid, and middle school got rough, every once in a while.   
  
_Life_ got rough every once in a while.   
  
There was a rough patch back in the day where his parents were always fighting, where he felt loneliness like a physical thing, a constant barrage of punches to the gut. His sole companions were the television and stacks of books, fantasy worlds piled one on top of the other. Then Kendall and James came along and suddenly he had brothers, two valiant protectors. No one in school would fuck with them. No one in school wanted to. Whenever the coldness between his parents got too great, Logan could pick up the phone. He didn’t have to retreat into his head, not anymore. But now that they were gone it was just like being a kid again. He wanted someone, anyone to pick him up, shelter him and fix him. His fingers twitched to dial numbers when he knew that there was a fifty-fifty chance there would be no answer. His ears were constantly ringing with the sound of friendships crumbling. When he went to sleep at night, no matter how good his day had been, he felt their absence like a weight on his chest.   
  
Some nights, even though it made no sense, he was scared that without them, he would forget how to live. He would forget how to breathe. He’d stare up at his ceiling, scared that if he fell asleep, he might never wake up again.   
  
“Dude,” Carlos said during _that_ conversation, “That’s tragic. Seriously, cry me some more man-tears.”  
  
Logan rolled his eyes. “Remind me never to tell you anything ever again.”  
  
“Look, I’m just saying, it feels like the end of the world now, but it’s not. You let yourself get sucked into the drama then, and ever since you can’t seem to climb back out. It’s nearly been a year.”   
  
“I can’t get over him,” Logan whispered, and he almost hoped that Carlos couldn’t hear it. He didn’t want anyone’s pity. He just wanted someone to listen, to understand; and no one did.   
  
Maybe other people didn’t get attached the way he did, or maybe there was something legitimately wrong with him, that he couldn’t seem to let go, but- he was trying. That should have counted for something.   
  
He tried to focus on his roommates, on his TA; anyone. Every once in a while someone would flirt with Logan, but he was scared. Now he knew what a mistake looked like; a car collision at sixty miles an hour and the crunch of glass on impact. He didn’t want to do that to himself again. But it didn’t stop the thought from haunting him, unbidden, from flashes of the-person-of-the-week’s face flickering into his mind, making him cringe when they were suddenly the lead in the porno Logan’s roommate downloaded late at night.   
  
“Logan.” Carlos sighed, voice weirdly tinny over the phone. “You’re better than this. Example:  movies. People like tragedies best for a reason, okay? They’re interesting. It fun to watch other people destroy themselves. Makes you want to fix it. Makes you glad you’re not in their position. Makes you wonder if it could’ve been avoided.”  
  
“People like happy movies too,” Logan objected, fully aware he was sulking.   
  
“Yeah, but that’s- happiness like that is rare. People like to watch them and feel good, like when you watch exotic birds at the zoo and wonder when they’re going to go extinct. People watch happy movies because they want to copy them. But happiness, it’s boring.”  
  
“What? That makes no sense.”  
  
“I _know_ ,” Carlos said, “Because I think being happy is awesome. But _you_ think it’s boring, at least in comparison to this long running drama of yours. If you were to forget about James and Kendall and your little gay love triangle, what would you have to think about? Have you even done anything for yourself since the band broke up?”  
  
Logan frowned. “I’m in school.”  
  
“You’re doing, like, the bare minimum. Didn’t you want to try for that internship?”  
  
“I do. It doesn’t start until the fall.”  
  
“Oh. Well. I don’t know. Academics are also boring- and either way, your priorities are way convoluted, dude. Let it go already.”  
  
“I get what you’re saying, but I don’t think I can’t let go of this because I’m _bored_. I love- loved James.”  
  
“If you loved him,” Carlos said quietly, “As in past tense, then there shouldn’t be a problem.”  
  
And that was exactly the problem. Logan didn’t think anything he felt for James would ever be past tense. 

  
\---

  
Logan went through the motions of moving on without ever actually doing so. He thought he might even be okay like that; comfortable, content doing the normal thing, the familiar thing. It was the thing he always wanted, but now it just seemed so insignificant.   
  
He felt like he was settling, but there wasn’t anything else he could do. Everyone expected him to just- get over it. So he pretended that he was. That moving on was something he was actually capable of.   
  
Logan didn’t tell anyone that some days, he would close his eyes and imagine that James was hovering over him, imagine his long fingers tracing the outline of Logan’s throat, imagine his voice and the jokes he would make.   
  
In a lot of ways, college was just like high school. Logan was still biting his arm in the middle of the night, an image of James on the back of his eyelids. He just felt a lot more self hatred during the sticky parts afterwards.  
  
It wasn’t even always about sex. Some nights Logan would lie in bed and think about James as he knew him at fourteen years old, still earnest and open and the boy he’d fallen for in the first place, explaining that he really did love Logan, with his whole heart. Saying that he was sorry it hadn’t worked out. He imagined a thousand different apologies, but none of them made a whit of difference, not really. Because in real life, James wasn’t sorry. He loved Kendall, and that wasn’t something he could apologize for.   
  
It wasn’t something Logan wanted him to apologize for, really. Love wasn’t the kind of thing that needed excuses. But he still hoped for it, all the same, because it hurt to think that he’d been so wrong.   
  
That he’d thought he could ever be enough. 

  
\---

  
Logan was in his second year of school when the impossible happened.   
  
He was not the oldest guy in his undergrad class, but he was one of a handful in his dorm that was able to legally drink, and he was constantly getting pestered to pick up a six pack for his roommates. That night, he was on his way back from the liquor store, and there was James; sitting on the steps of his dorm, a duffel bag in one hand and a tentative smile on his lips.   
  
New York was a long way away from California, and he chose it for a reason. It had been a few months since Logan last saw him, at an awkward, uncomfortable Christmas party thrown by the ex-band’s parental units. Logan had ended up ditching minutes into it, despite Carlos’s hardcore attempts to make everything better with high-alcohol content eggnog.   
  
It had been more than a _year_ since the last night they spent together, since Logan cradled James’s face in his hands while he was buried inside of him and listened to his heartbeat and quietly said goodbye before running out of the studio like he was feeling the hounds of hell.   
  
Logan stared at James and felt his heart thud painfully in his chest, and he thought that was just the adrenaline, the endorphins and chemicals making his brain turn to mush, making him feel a bit woozy where he stood. But no matter how many premed classes he took, he couldn’t help but think that chemicals weren’t the same as love. James’s face and his eyes and his body kind of were; love embodied in a boy. He wondered if it was pathetic that he was still the same way he was at fifteen, pathetic and more than a little bit head over heels for his best friend, shining golden in the lamplight.   
  
Logan opened his mouth to speak, but the words didn’t want to come, and his feet wouldn’t carry him any further forward. It was like history was a physical barrier between them.  
  
James was the one who had to lift a hand and say, “Hi.”  
  
“Why are you here?” Logan finally managed.  
  
“To see you.”  
  
“But why?”  
  
“We’re friends.”  
  
Logan thought that they weren’t anything like friends. Not anymore.  
  
“How’s Kendall?” he gritted out, and it was a nasty thing to ask, but he couldn’t help it. Seeing James wasn’t like in his fantasies. He suddenly didn’t even want an apology. He just wanted to be left alone, to simmer in his pain far away from everything that James was.  
  
James’s head snapped up and he said, honestly, “I don’t know. Good. I think?”  
  
“You think?”  
  
“It’s been a while since we- talked.”  
  
Logan wanted to ask if _talked_ was code for _fucked_ , but he didn’t know how to phrase the question. Carefully, he took a seat on the stoop next to James, making sure that there were at least a few feet of distance between them.  
  
James folded his arms across his knees, peering up at Logan out of the corners of his eyes. “I messed up really badly, didn’t I?”  
  
Yes, was what Logan wanted to say. What he asked instead was, “Do you think you messed up?”  
  
“I don’t know. I thought age was supposed to give you, like, clarity, but I don’t feel any older, or wiser. Not really.”  
  
“Me neither.” That was one thing that Logan could agree with.   
  
James sighed. “When the band was still together, I thought losing Kendall was the worst thing that would ever happen. I hated that I hurt you, but- he was all I could think about. Until you left.”  
  
Logan didn’t want to hear this. But he couldn’t think of a way to stop it, other than walking up to his apartment and shutting James out of his life completely, forever. Even though he’d spent so many long, lonely nights wishing for a way to do just that, now that he was faced with the actual possibility of it he found himself crippled by cowardice.   
  
No matter what Carlos said, Logan just wasn’t ready to let go.   
  
“They say hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Logan said, the words more magnanimous than he actually felt.   
  
“Look, I can’t apologize for the way I felt about Kendall. I want to, but it wouldn’t be honest. But Logan, I am so sorry for the way I treated you. I’m sorry I let you walk away without letting you know that you were important, too.”  
  
“Just not as much as Kendall,” Logan said, bitter.   
  
“No. You’re every bit as important as he is. Was. Whatever. Just- in a different way. And I know that’s not what you want- wanted?” James faltered. He was quiet for a beat before admitting, “I wasn’t fair to you.”   
  
“James. It’s not like you could have controlled it, somehow. We don’t get to choose who we want to be with.” Logan sighed. He was too damn nice sometimes.   
  
“Yeah, but- do you remember the first time we- uh. The night your grandma died?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
James’s eyes were still liquid fire, still gradient colors and beauty even in the darkness. “That was my first time. Doing something like that. With a guy. Before you, I never wanted to. So- you’re important, okay? Believe me.”  
  
Logan wanted to.  
  
He didn’t know how.  
  
James took a deep breath. He said, “If it’s okay- I want to try again.”   
  
And Logan wasn’t sure he could breathe, suddenly. He’d been dreaming about those words. But they didn’t feel anything like he’d thought. They were an _insult_. James didn’t even know the person Logan had become. And the old Logan? He was gone.  
  
This new Logan didn’t want to take Kendall’s _rejects_. It was mean and it was cruel and it was the first thought in his head. If he took James back, it meant he would always be second best. He wasn’t sure that he could stand being with James when he’d always know that he loved Kendall more. He didn’t know if he could forgive James for stringing him along for all that time.   
  
And more than anything, he was scared that maybe he wouldn’t be enough. That he’d let James in, only to be told once more that he couldn’t stand alone on his own merit. He was barely twenty one. He shouldn’t have been this fucked up. He shouldn’t have been this dysfunctional. But he was, and he was terrified.  
  
“Do you think second chances are really possible?” Logan asked, and he was tired, and he wanted this to be a horrible, terrible dream that he could wake up from, and more than anything, he wanted there to be hope.  
  
“God, I hope so.” James laughed, sounding a little choked up. “But I’m not sure. I do know that- the person I was back then wasn’t right. Not for you. Not for anyone.”  
  
“And the person you are now?” Logan asked, because he got that people changed, grew, developed, learned. He got that, but it didn’t make it feel any less like settling.   
  
Logan didn’t want to be the person James settled for.   
  
“I don’t know.” James shrugged. “I don’t know if I’m right for you. I feel like a cautionary tale: Don’t grow up and slut around, kids. You’ll end up miserable and alone.”  
  
“Hey. You’re not alone.” Logan reached for James’s hand before he had a chance to think about it. James frowned at him.   
  
“I thought you _hated_ me.”  
  
“I do.” Logan replied automatically. “I mean. I do, but- not really. I can’t hate you as much as I want to.”  
  
He didn’t know which was weaker; the fact that he couldn’t figure out how to ever forgive James for breaking his heart, or the fact that he wanted to.   
  
He really, honestly wanted to. If he forgave him, it would mean that he’d learned. He’d learned that-  
  
Human beings weren’t one thing or another. They weren’t brave and strong and loyal and true; no one could be all of that, and _just_ that. People had facets, they had darkness and vulnerability and moments where they didn’t make the right choices. It didn’t matter if you’d known a person your entire life. There were still parts that you couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t want to know. Because inside, a person could be scared of what they were, when what they were didn’t fit in with a life full of Christmas colored jerseys and face guards and white picket fences. Because they could be scared of being alone, when being alone meant facing their own narcissism and vanity and all the people they’d hurt.   
  
Because at the time, they might not have thought what they did would change their life, irrevocably, even if an irrevocable change is all they’d wanted going in.   
  
Kendall and James and Logan. They all made the wrong choices. And Logan thought that no matter what decision he made this time around, it was still going to be the wrong one. Logan felt like he didn’t have any right options left.  
  
“I don’t know if I’m right for anyone. But I want to try,” James said.   
  
If Logan turned James away, the part of him that was a good friend, that still believed in love and magic and all things that made life worth living would die. And if he didn’t, he’d lose his pride, his dignity, and everything that he’d clung to like a safety blanket over the past few years. Everything that had made him the man he was.   
  
Maybe it was pathetic, but Logan would choose love, every time.   
  
He didn’t care if he lost himself again. Love destroyed. It was in its nature. But if it was good, it created as well, and Logan thought that it was long past time that he was able to be a part of something new.  
  
“If- you really want to. Be together, I mean. We could-“ James was looking at him and Logan still felt like he couldn’t breathe. He rushed to say, “It can’t be like last time. It’s- you’ve got to prove it to me.”  
  
James’s eyes flickered closed. “And how do I do that, Logan?”  
  
“I don’t know. But you need to figure it out. And if you do- okay. _Okay_ ,” Logan repeated.   
  
“Are you serious?”   
  
“I’m terrified. So yeah. I’m serious.”  
  
Life was not a movie, but Logan wanted it to be. He wanted the swelling crescendo of music and that dramatic bit where the starcrossed lovers dashed off to meet each other, crashing into each other’s arms like there was nothing else they could possibly do. But real life wasn’t anything like that, and there was no music at all except for the gentle hum of James’s breath. It was just him and the cold steps and all the apologies in James’s eyes.  
  
All Logan had to do was accept them.  
  
“Logan, can I kiss you?”  
  
It was the first time Logan had ever heard James ask. He nodded, abruptly shy.  
  
What if things between them had changed?  
  
What if there was no way to go back to what they had, to the way love glowed in Logan’s chest like a lantern and-  
  
James pressed his lips soft against Logan’s.  
  
The wind whipped soft overhead, rustling the plastic bag with its six pack of beer. The lamplight pooled golden on the sidewalk, fighting off the silver rays of the moon. A couple of coeds walked by, laughing and talking about their upcoming exam. Logan didn’t hear any of it.  
  
The first time he’d kissed James, lightning had lanced across the sky while sadness grew like a sapling in his chest. Now, between their tongues and their teeth and their shared breath, Logan had lightning in his heart, accompanied by a trembling, far off thunder that felt like hope.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is very, very old as far as I'm concerned, and it has spawned multiple sequels from different POV's, because what started as Logan's fragile love story kind of spiraled into: well, wait, James actually is not a completely horrible person (or BUT WAIT, HE ACTUALLY LOVED LOGAN THE WHOLE TIME), and Kendall actually has feelings too (BECAUSE OH HEY, HE WASN'T FAKING WITH JAMES). Love triangles are very hard to make fair and balanced, and I ended up working very, very hard to show in the sequels that Logan's POV and the choices he makes were both right and wrong, simultaneously. Initially, though, I think I mostly just wanted to write a story about second chances, sooo. Um. Here?


End file.
